A Thousand Years of Dreams
by Merilsell
Summary: A novelization of Kaim's bittersweet dreams in-game. All 35 dreams will be included. I own nothing in these stories except the time needed to transcribe and formatting the dreams into text form. Enjoy.
1. Hanna's Departure

_**A/N: **__I have been lately replaying Lost Odyssey (love this game) and found it a shame that you nowhere find the wonderful dreams written by __Kiyoshi Shigematsu in text form. So even though probably no one cares (anymore), but that's why I have written them down now. Purely for my own, but also for your enjoyment. _

_To clarify for those who don't know the game: Lost Odyssey is the story of Kaim, an immortal human that has no memories on his life before and these dreams are flashbacks that occur and trigger at certain places in the game. These are pieces of Kaim's memory coming back to him. As the nature of these stories maybe give away, he led no happy life. _

_**Disclaimer:** I take, by any means, **no** credit for writing any of these dreams, nor have I added anything else than sensible formatting to make them more readable than in-game. I'm just the one transcribing these dreams into text form. _

_Lost Odyssey belongs to their respectful owner Mistwalker Inc. _

* * *

><p><strong>First Dream: Hanna's Departure <strong>

.

The family members have tears in their eyes, when they welcome Kaim back to the inn from his long journey. "Thank you for coming."

He understand the situation immediately.

The time for departure is drawing near. Too soon, too soon. But still, he knows, this day should have to come sometimes and not in the distant future.

"I might never see you again," she said to him with a sad smile when he left on this journey, her smiley face almost transparent in its whiteness, to fragile and therefore indescribably beautiful -as she lay in bed.

"May I see Hanna now?" he asks.

The innkeeper gives him a tiny nod and says."I don't think she'll know _who_ you are, though, she hasn't opened her eyes since last night," he warns Kaim.

One can tell from the slight movement of her chest that she is clinging to a frail thread of life, but it could snap at any moment.

"It's such a shame. I know you made a special point to come here for her." Another tear glides down the wife's cheek.

"Never mind, it's fine," Kaim says.

He has been present at innumerable deaths, and his experience has taught him. Death takes away the power of speech first of all. Then ability to see. What remains alive to the very end, is the power to hear. Even though the person has lost consciousness, it is by no means unusual for the voices of the family to bring both smiles or tears.

Kaim puts his arm around the woman's shoulder and says,"I have lots of travel stories to tell her. I've been looking forward to this my whole time on the road."

Instead of smiling, the woman releases another large tear and nods to Kaim. "And Hanna was so looking forward to hear of your stories."

Her sobs almost drown out her words.

The innkeeper says. "I wish I could urge you to rest up from your travels before you see her, but..."

Kaim interrupts his apologies."Of course I'll see her right away."

There is very little time left. Hanna, the only daughter of the innkeeper and his wife, will probably breathe her last before the sun comes up.

Kaim lowers his pack to the floor and quietly opens the door to Hanna's room. Hanna has frail from birth. Far from enjoying the opportunity to travel, she rarely left the town or even the neighborhood in which she was born and raised. This child will probably not live to adulthood, the doctor told her parents. To this tiny girl with extraordinary beautiful, doll-like features, the gods has dealt on all-too-sad destiny.

That they had allowed her to born the only daughter of the keepers of a small inn by the highway was perhaps one small act of atonement for such inquiry. Hanna was unable to go anywhere, but the guests who stayed at her parents' inn would tell her stories of the countries and towns and landscapes and people that she would never know.

Whenever new guests arrived at the inn, Hanna would ask them,"Where are you from?" Where are you going? Can you tell me a story?"

She would sit and listen to theirs staying with sparkling eyes, urges them into new episodes with "And then? And then?" then they left the inn, she would beg them, "Please come back, and tell me lots and lots of stories about faraway countries."

She would stand there waving until the person disappeared far down the highway give one lonely sigh, and go back to bed.

.

.

* * *

><p>.<p>

Hanna is sound asleep.

No one else in the room, perhaps an indicator that she has long since passed the stage when the doctors can do anything to her. Kaim sits down in the chair next to the bed and says with a smile, "Hello Hanna, I'm back."

She does not respond. Her little chest, still without the swollen of a grown woman, rises and falls almost imperceptibly.

"I went far across the ocean this time," he tells her, "The ocean on the side where the sun comes up. I took a boat from the harbor way way way far beyond the mountains you can see from this window, and I was on the sea from the time the moon was perfectly round till it got smaller and smaller and then bigger and bigger until it was full again. There was nothing but ocean as far as the eye could see. Just the sea and the sky. Can you imagine it, Hanna? You never seen the ocean, but I'm sure people had told you about it. It's like a huge big endless puddle."

Kaim chuckles to himself, and it seems that Hanna's pale white cheeks moves slightly. She can hear him, even if she cannot speak or see, her ears are still alive. Believing and hoping this to be true, Kaim continues with the story of his travels.

He speaks no words of parting.

As always with Hanna, Kaim smile with a special gentleness he has never shown to anyone else and he goes on telling his tales with bright voice, sometimes even accompany his story with exaggerated gestures.

He tells her about the blue ocean. He tells her about the blue sky. He says nothing about the violent sea battle that stained the ocean red.

He never tell her about those things.

Hanna was still a tiny girl when Kaim first visited the inn. When she asked him, "Where are you from?" and "Will you tell me some stories?" with her childish pronunciation and innocent smile, Kaim felt a soft glow in his chest.

At that time, he was returning from a battle. More precisely, he had ended the battle and was his way to his next. His life consisted of traveling from battlefield to another and nothing about that changed to this day.

He has taken the lives of countless enemy troops and witnessed the death of countless comrades on the battlefield. However, the only thing separates enemy from comrades is the slightest stroke of fortune. Had the gears of destiny turned in a slight different way his enemies would be comrades and his comrades enemies.

This is the fate of the mercenaries.

He was spiritually worn down back then and felt unbearably lonely. As a possessor of eternal life, Kaim had no fear of death, which was precisely why each of the soldier's faces distorted in fear, and why each face of a man who died in agony was burnt permanently into his brain.

Ordinarily, he would spend night on the road drinking, immersing himself in an alcohol stupor - or pretending it - he was try to make himself forget the unforgettable.

When, however he saw Hanna's smile as she begged him for stories about his long journey, he felt a far warmer and deeper comfort than he could ever obtain from liquor.

He told her many things.

About the beauty of the flower he discovered on the battlefield.

About the beauty of the most filling the forest the night before the final battle.

About the marvelous taste of the spring water in a ravine where he and his men had fled after a losing battle.

About a vast, the sky he saw after the battle.

He never told anything sad. He kept his mouth shut about the human's ugliness and stupidity he witness endlessly on the battlefield. He concealed his position as a mercenary from her, kept silent regardless his reason for traveling constantly and spoke only of things that were beautiful and lovely.

He sees now that he told Hanna only beautiful stories like she's not much out of concern for her purity, but for his own sake.

Stayed in the inn where Hanna waited to see him turned out to be one of Kaim's small pleasure in life. Telling her about the memories he brought back from his journey, he felt some degree of salvation, however slight.

Five years, ten years, his friendship with the girl continued. Little by little, she passed adulthood, which meant that, as the doctors had predicted, each day brought her that much closer to death.

And now, Kaim ends the last travel story he would share with her. He can never see her again, can never tell her stories again.

Before dawn, when darkness of night is at its deepest,long pauses enter into Hanna's breathe.

The final thread of her life is about to snap as Kaim and her parents watch over her.

The tiny light that has lingered in Kaim's face will be extinguished.

His lonely travels will began again tomorrow -his long, long travel without end. "You'll be leaving on travels on your own soon, Hanna," Kaim tells her gently.

"You'll be leaving for a world that no one knows, a world that never entered into any of the stories you have heard so far. Finally, you will be able to leave your bed and walk anywhere you want to go. You'll be free."

He wants her to know that death is not sorrow but a joy mixed with tears.

"It's your turn now. Be sure to tell everyone about the memories of your journey." Her parents will meet her again someday. And someday Hanna will be able to meet all the guests she has known at the inn, far beyond the sky.

_I, however, can never go there. I can never escape this world. I can never see you again._

"This is not a goodbye. It's the start on your journey." He speaks his final words to her. "We'll meet again."

His final lie to her.

Hanna makes her departure. Her face is transfused with a tranquil smile as if she just said.

"S_ee you soon."_

Her eyes will never open again.

A single tear glides slowly down her cheek.


	2. A Hero's Return

**Dream Two:**

** A Hero's Return**

.**  
><strong>

Alone in a crowd of rugged men, nursing his drink in the far corner of the old post town's only tavern: Kaim.

A single man strides in through the tavern door. Massively built, he wears the garb of a warrior. His soiled uniform bespeaks a long journey. Fatigue marks his face, but his eyes wear a penetrating gleam—the look of a fighting man on active duty.

The tavern's din hushes instantly. Every drunken eye in the place fastens on the soldier with awe and gratitude. The long war with the neighboring country has ended at last, and the men who fought on the front lines are returning to their homes. So it is with this military man.

The soldier takes a seat at the table next to Kaim's, and downs a slug of liquor with the forcefulness of a hard drinker—a man who drinks to kill his pain.

Two cups, three, four...

Another customer approaches him, bottle in hand, wearing an ingratiating grin—a typical crafty town punk. "Let me offer you a drink," wheedles the man, "as a token of gratitude for your heroic efforts on behalf of the fatherland."

The soldier unsmilingly allows the man to fill his cup.

"How was it at the front? I'm sure you performed many valiant deeds on the battlefield."

The soldier empties his cup in silence.

The punk refills the cup and adopts an ever more fawning smile. "Now that we're friends, how about telling me some war tales? You've got such big, strong arms, how many enemy soldiers did you ki—"

Without a word, the soldier hurls the contents of his cup into the man's face.

The punk flies into a rage and draws his knife. No sooner does it leave its sheath than Kaim's fist sends it flying through the air. Faced with the powerful united front of Kaim and the soldier, the punk runs out muttering curses.

The two big men watch him go, then share a faint smile. Kaim doesn't have to speak with the soldier to know that he lives in deep sadness. For his part, the soldier (having cheated death any number of times) is aware of the shadow that lurks in Kaim's expression.

The tavern's din returns.

Kaim and the soldier pour each other drinks. "I've got a wife and daughter I haven't seen since I shipped out," says the soldier. "It's been three long years."

He lets himself smile shyly now for the first time as he takes a photograph of his wife and daughter from his pocket and shows it to Kaim: the wife a woman of dewy freshness, the daughter still very young.

"They're the reason I survived. The thought of going home to them alive was all that sustained me in battle."

"Is your home far from here?"

"No, my village is just over the next pass. I'm sure they've heard the news that the war is over and can hardly wait to have me home."

He could get there tonight if he wanted to badly enough. It was that close. "But..." the soldier downs a mouthful of liquor and groans. "I'm afraid."

"Afraid? Of what?"

"I want to see my wife and daughter, but I'm afraid to have them see me. I don't know how many men I've killed these past three years. I had no choice. I had to do it to stay alive. If I was going to get back to my family, I had no choice but to kill one enemy soldier after another, and each and every one of those men had families they had left at home."

It was the code of war, the soldier's destiny. To stay alive in battle, you had to go on killing men before they could kill you.

"I had no time to think about such things at the front. I was too busy trying to survive. I see it now, though—now that the war is over. Three years of sin are carved into my face. This is the face of a killer. I don't want to show this face to my wife and daughter."

The soldier pulls out a leather pouch from which he withdraws a small stone.

He tells Kaim it is an unpolished gemstone, something he found shortly after he left for the battlefield.

"A gemstone?" Kaim asks, unconvinced. The stone on the table is a dull black without a hint of the gleam a gem should have.

"It sparkled when I first found it. I was sure my daughter would love it when I brought it home to her. Gradually, though, the stone lost its gleam and turned cloudy. Every time I killed an enemy soldier, something like the stain of his blood would rise to the surface of the stone. As you can see, it's almost solid black now after three years. The stone is stained by the sins I've committed. I call it my sin stone.'"

"You don't have to blame yourself so harshly," says Kaim. "You had to do it to stay alive."

"I know that." says the soldier. "I _know_ that. But still... just like me, the men I killed had villages to go home to, and families waiting for them there..." The soldier then says to Kaim, "You, too, I suppose. You must have a family." Kaim gives his head a little shake. "Not me." he says. "No family."

"A home village at least?"

"I don't have any place to go home to."

"Eternal traveler, eh?"

"Uh-huh. That's me."

The soldier chuckles softly and gives Kaim a sour smile. It is hard to tell how fully he believes what Kaim has told him. He slips the "sin stone" into the leather pouch and says, "You know what I think? If the stone turned darker every time I took a life, it ought to get some of its gleam back every time I _save_ a life."

Instead of answering, Kaim drains the last drops of liquor from his cup and rises from the table. The soldier remains in his chair and Kaim, staring down at him, offers him these words of advice:

"If you have a place you can go home to, you should go to it. Just go, no matter how much guilt you may have weighing you down. I'm sure your wife and daughter will understand. You're no criminal. You're a hero: you fought your heart out to stay alive."

"I'm glad I met you." says the soldier. "I needed to hear that."

He holds out his right hand to Kaim, who grasps it in return.

"I hope your travels go well." says the soldier.

"And _your _travels will soon be over," says Kaim with a smile, starting for the door. Just then the punk charges at Kaim from behind, wielding a pistol.

"Watch out!" bellows the soldier and rushes after Kaim.

As Kaim whirls around, the punk takes aim and shouts,"You can't treat _me_ like that, you son of a bitch!"

The soldier flies between the two men and takes a bullet in the gut.

And so, as he so desperately wished to do, the soldier has saved someone's life. Ironically, it is for the life of Kaim, a man who can neither age nor die, that the soldier has traded his one and only life.

Sprawled on the floor, nearly unconscious, the soldier thrusts the leather pouch into Kaim's hand.

"Look at my sin stone, will you?"

"Maybe...maybe." he says, chuckling weakly, "some of its shine has come back."

Blood spurts from his mouth, strangling the laugh.

Kaim looks inside the bag and says,"It's sparkling now. It's clean."

"It is?" gasps the soldier. "Good. My daughter will be so glad..." He smiles with satisfaction and holds his hand out for the pouch. Gently, Kaim lays the pouch on the palm of his hand and folds the man's fingers over it. The soldier draws his last breath, and the pouch falls to the floor.

The dead man's face wears a peaceful expression.

The stone, however—the man's sin stone, which has rolled from the open pouch—is as black as ever.


	3. White Flowers

**Third Dream: White Flowers**

.**  
><strong>

Lovely white flowers mark the town.

They bloom on every street corner, not in beds or fields set aside for their cultivation, but blending naturally and in profusion with every row of houses, as though the buildings and the blossoms have grown together.

The season is early spring and snow still lingers on the nearby mountains, but the stretch of ocean that gently laps the town's southern shores is bathed in refulgent sunlight.

This is an old and prosperous harbor town. Even now, each day its pier sees many cruise ships and freighters come and go.

Its history, however, is sharply divided between the time _'before'_ and _'after' _an event that happened one day long ago. People here prefer not to talk about it- the watershed engraved upon the town's chronology.

The memories are too sorrowful to make stories out of them.

Kaim knows this, but because he knows, he had come here once again.

"Passing through?" the tavern master asks him.

At the sound of his voice, Kaim responds with a faint smile.

"You are here for the festival, I suppose. You should take your time and enjoy it." The man is in high spirit. He has joined his costumers glass after glass until now and is quite red in the face, but no one shows any signs of blaming him of overindulging. Every seat of the tavern is filled and the air reverberates with laughter. Happy voices can be heard now and then from the road outside.

The entire town is celebrating. Once each year the festival has people making merry all night long until the sun comes up.

"I hope you have a room for the night, sir. Too late to find one now. Every inn is full to overflowing."

"So it seems."

"Not that anyone would be foolish enough to spend a night like this quietly tucked away under the covers in his room."The tavern master winks to Kaim as if to say: _Not _you_, sir. I'm sure! _

"Tonight we are going to have the biggest, wildest party in town – and everybody's invited. Local or not. Drink, food, gambling, women: just let me know what you want and I'll make sure that you'll have it."

Kaim sips his drink and says nothing. Because he is planning to stay awake all night, he has taken no room – though he has no plans to enjoy the festival, either.

Kaim will be offering up a prayer at the hour before dawn, when the night is at its darkest and deepest. He will leave the town, sent off by the morning sun as it pokes its face up between the mountains and the sea, just as he did at the time of his last visit. Back then, the tavern master, who a few minutes ago was telling one of his regular customers that his first grandchild is about to be born, was himself just an infant.

"This one's on me, drink up!" says the tavern master, filling Kaim's shot glass. He peers at Kaim suspiciously and says, "You _did_ come for the festival, didn't you?"

"No, not really," says Kaim.

"Don't tell me you didn't know about it! You mean you came here by pure chance?"

"Afraid so."

"Well, if you came here on business, forget 'll never get serious talk out of anybody on a special night like this."

The tavern master goes on to explain what is so special about this night. "You must've heard _something_ about it. Once, a long time ago, this town was almost completely destroyed."

.

.

* * *

><p>.<p>

There are two great events that divide history into _'before'_ and_ 'after'_: one is the birth or death of some great personage—a hero or a savior. The other is something like a war or plague or natural disaster.

What divided this town's history into _'before'_ and _'after'_ was a violent earthquake. It happened without warning and gave the soundly sleeping people of the town no chance to flee. A crack opened up in the earth with a roar, and roads and buildings just fell to pieces. Fires started, and they spread in the twinkling of an eye. Almost everyone was killed.

"You probably cant imagine it. All _I_ know is what they taught me in school. And what does 'Resurrection Festival' mean to a kid! It was just something that happened 'once upon a time.' I _live_ here and that's all it means to me, so a traveler like you probably can't even begin to imagine what it was like."

"Is that what they call this holiday? 'Resurrection Festival'?"

"Uh-huh. The town was resurrected from a total ruin to _this_.That's what the celebration is all about."

Kaim gives the man a grim smile and sips his liquor.

"What's so funny?" the tavern master asks.

"Last time I was here, they were calling it 'Earthquake Memorial Day.' It wasn't a festival for this kind of wild celebrating."

"What are you talking about?It's been the 'Resurrection Festival' ever since I was a kid."

"That was before you were old enough to remember anything."

"Huh?"

"And before that, they called it 'Consolation of the Spirits.' They'd burn a candle for each person who died, and pray for them to rest in peace. It was a sad festival, lots of crying."

"You sound as if you saw it happening yourself."

"I did."

The tavern master laughs with a loud snort.

"You _look_ sober, but you must be plastered out of your mind! Now listen, it's festival night, so I'm going to let you off the hook for pulling my leg, but don't try stuff like that in front of the other townspeople. All of our ancestors—mine included—are the ones who barely escaped with their lives."

Kaim knows full well what he is doing. He never expected the man to believe him.

He just wanted to find out himself whether the townspeople were still handing down the memories of the tragedy—whether, deep down behind their laughing faces, there still lingered the sorrow that had been passed down from their forefather's time.

Called away by one of his other customers, the tavern master leaves Kaim's side but not without first delivering a warning.

"Be careful what you say, Sir. That kind of nonsense can get you in trouble. Really. Think about it: the earthquake happened all of two hundred years ago!"

Kaim does not answer him. Instead, he sips his liquor in silence. Among the ones who died in the tragedy two hundred years ago were his wife and daughter. Of all the dozens of wives and hundreds of children that Kaim has had in his eternal life, the wife and child he had here were especially unforgettable.

.

.

* * *

><p>.<p>

In those days, Kaim had a job at the harbor.

There were just the three of them—he, his wife, and their little girl.  
>They lived simply and happily.<p>

The same kind of days that had preceded today would continue on into endless tomorrows. Everyone in the town believed that—including Kaim's wife and daughter, of course.

But Kaim knew differently. Precisely because his own life was long without end and he had consequently tasted the pain of countless partings, Kaim knew all too well that in the daily life of humans there was no _"forever." _

This life his family was leading would have to end sometime. It could not go on unchanged. This was by no means a cause for sorrow, however. Denied a grasp upon "forever," human beings knew how to love and cherish the here and now.

Kaim especially loved to show his daughter flowers—the more fragile and short-lived the better.

Flowers that bloomed with the morning sun and scattered before the sun went down. They were everywhere in this harbor town: lovely, white flowers that bloomed in early spring.

His daughter loved the flowers. She was a gentle child who would never break off blossoms that had struggled so bravely to bloom. Instead, she simply watched them for hours at a time.

That year, too...

"Look how big the buds are! They'll be blooming any time now!" she said happily when she found the white flowers on the road near the house.

"Tomorrow, maybe?" Kaim wondered aloud.

"Absolutely!" his wife chimed in merrily. "Get up early tomorrow morning and have a look!"

"Poor little flowers, though," said the daughter. "It's nice when they bloom, but then they wither right away."

"All the better" said Kaim's wife. "It's good luck if you get to see them blooming. It makes it more fun."

"It may be fun for us," answered the girl. "But think about the poor flowers. They work so hard to open up, and they wither that same day. It's sad..."

"Well, yes, I guess so..."

A momentary air of sadness flowed into the room, but Kaim quickly dispelled it with a laugh.

"Happiness is not the same thing as 'longevity'!" he proclaimed.

"What does that mean, Papa?"

"It may not bloom for long, but the flower's happy if it can open up the prettiest blossom and give off the sweetest perfume it knows how to make while it _is_ blooming."

The girl seemed to be having trouble grasping this and simply nodded with a little sigh. She then broke into a smile and said, "It must be true if you say so, Papa!"

_Your smile is more beautiful than any flower in full bloom._

He should have said it to her. He later regretted that he had not.

The words he _had_ uttered so carelessly, he came to realize, turned out to be something of a prophecy.

"Well now, young lady," he said. "If you're getting up early to see all the flowers tomorrow morning, you'd better go to bed right now."

"All right, Papa, if I really have to..."

"I'm going to bed now, too" said Kaim's wife.

"Okay, then. G'nite, Papa."

His wife said to Kaim, "Good night, dear. I really am going to bed now."

"Good night" Kaim replied, enjoying one last cup to ease the day's fatigue.

These turned out to be the last words the family shared.

A violent earthquake struck the town before dawn. Kaim's house collapsed in a heap of rubble. Kaim's two loved ones departed for that distant other world before they could awaken from their sleep and without ever having had a chance to say "Good morning" to him.

The morning sun rose on a town that had been destroyed in an instant. Amid the rubble, the flowers were blooming—the white flowers that Kaim's daughter had wanted so badly to see. Kaim thought to lay a flower in offering on his daughter's cold corpse, but he abandoned the idea. He could not bring himself to pick a flower. No one—no living being on the face of the earth, he realized—had the right to snatch the life of a flower that possessed that life for only one short day.

Kaim could never say to his daughter, "You go first to heaven and wait for me: I'll be there before long."

Nor would he ever know the joy of reunion with his loved ones. To live for a thousand years, meant bearing the pain of a thousand years of partings.

Kaim continued his long journey.

A dizzying numbers of years and months followed by: years and months during which numberless wars and natural calamities scourged the earth. People were born, and they died. They loved each other and were parted from the ones they loved. There were joys beyond measure, and sorrows just as measureless. People fought and argued without end, but they also loved and forgave each other endlessly. Thus was history built up as the tears of the past evolved gradually into prayers for the future.

Kaim continued his long journey.

After a while, he rarely thought about the wife and daughter with whom he had spent those few short days in the harbor town. But he never forgot them.

Kaim continued his long journey.

And in the course of his travels, he stopped by this harbor town again.

As the night deepened, the din of the crowds only increased, but now, as a hint of light comes into the eastern sky, without a signal from anyone, the noise gives way to silence.

Kaim has been standing in the town's central square. The revelers, too, have found their way here one at a time, until, almost before he knows it, the stone-paved plaza is filled with people.

Kaim feels a tap on the shoulder. "I didn't expect to find _you_ here!" says the tavern master.

When Kaim gives him a silent smile, the tavern master looks somewhat embarrassed and says, "There's something I forgot to tell you before..."

"Oh...?"

"Well, you know, the earthquake happened a _long_ time ago. Before my father and mother's time, even before my grandparents' generation. It might sound funny for me to say this, but I can't _imagine_ this town in ruins."

"I know what you mean."

"I do think, though, that there are probably things in this world that you can remember even if you haven't actually experienced them. Like the earthquake: I haven't forgotten it. And I'm not the only one. It may have happened two hundred years ago, but nobody in this town has ever forgotten it. We can't imagine it, but we can't forget it, either."

Just as Kaim nods again to signal his understanding of the tavern keeper's words, a somber melody echoes throughout the square.

This is the hour when the earthquake destroyed the town.

All the people assembled here close their eyes, clasp their hands together, and offer up a prayer, the tavern master and Kaim among them. To Kaim's closed eyes come the smiling faces of his dead wife and daughter. Why are they so beautiful and so sad, these faces that believe with all their hearts that tomorrow is sure to come?

The music ends.

The morning sun climbs above the horizon. And everywhere throughout the town bloom countless white flowers. In two hundred years, the white flowers have changed. The scientists have hypothesized that _"The earthquake may have changed the nature of the soil itself,"_ but no one knows the cause for sure.

The lives of the flowers have lengthened.

Where before they would bloom and wither in the space of a single day, now they hold their blooms for three and four days at a time. Moistened by the dew of night, bathed in the light of the sun, the white flowers strive to live their lives to the fullest, beautifying the town as if striving to live out the portion of life denied to those whose _"tomorrows"_ were snatched away from them forever.


	4. In the Mind of a Captive

**Fourth Dream: In the Mind of a Captive**

.**  
><strong>

He knows that it is useless.

But he can't suppress the impulse that wells up from within his own flesh. He needs to do it—to hurl his entire body against the bars. It does no good at all. His flesh simply bounces off the thick iron bars.

"Number 8! What the hell are you doing?" The guard's angry shout echoes down the corridor. The prisoners are never called by name, only by the numbers on their cells. Kaim is Number 8.

Kaim says nothing. Instead, he slams his shoulder against the bars. The massive bars of iron never nudge. All they do is leave a dull, heavy ache in Kaim's superbly conditioned muscles and bones.

Now, instead of shouting again, the guard blows his whistle, and the other guard come running from their station. "Number 8! What's it going to take to make you understand?"

"Do you want to be thrown into the punishment cell? Don't look at me like that. Start resisting, and all it will get you is a longer time in here!"

Sitting on the floor of his cell, legs splayed out, Kaim ignores the guards' shouts. He has been to the punishment room any number of times. He knows he has been branded a "highly rebellious prisoner."

But he can't help himself.

Something is squirming deep down inside him. Some hot thing trapped inside there is seething and writhing.

"Some war hero you turned out to be!" says one guard.

"You can't do shit in here. What's the matter, soldier boy? Can't do anything without an enemy staring you in the face?"

The guard next to him taunts Kaim with laughter. "Too bad for you, buddy, no enemies in here? Nobody from your side, either. We've got you locked up all by yourself."

After the guards leave, Kaim curls up on the floor, hugging his knees, eyes clamped tight.

_All by myself—_

_The guard was right. I thought I was used to living alone, in battle, on the road. But the loneliness here in prison is deeper than any I've ever experienced before. _

_And more frightening. _

.

.

* * *

><p><em>.<em>

Walls on three sides, and beyond the bars nothing but another wall enclosing the narrow corridor. This dungeon was built so as to prevent prisoners from seeing each other, or even to sense each others' presence.

The total lack of a change in the view paralyzes the sense of time as well. Kaim has no idea how many days have passed since he was thrown in here. Time flows on, that much is certain. But with nowhere to go, it simply stagnates inside him.

The true torture that prison inflicts on a man is neither to rob him of his freedom nor to force him to experience loneliness. The real punishment is having to live where nothing ever moves in your field of view and time never flows. The water in a river will never putrefy, but lock it in a jar and that is exactly what it will eventually do.

The same is true here.

Maybe parts of him deep down in his body and mind are already beginning to give off a rotten stench. Because he is aware of this, Kaim drags himself up from the floor again and slams himself into the bars over and over. There is not the remotest chance that doing so will break a bar. Nor does he think he can manage to escape this way.

Still, he does it repeatedly.

He can't help himself. He has to do it again and again. In the instant before his body smashes into that bars—for that split second—a puff of wind strikes his cheek. The unmoving air moves, if only for that brief interval. The touch of the air is the one thing that gives Kaim a fragmentary hint of the flow of time.

The guards comes running, face grim with anger.

_Now I can see human shapes where before there was only a wall. That alone is enough to lift my spirits. Don't these guards realize that?_

"All right, Number 8, it's the punishment room for you! Let's see if three days in there will cool your head!"

Kaim's lips relax into a smile when he hears the order.

_Don't these guys get it? Now my scenery will change. Time will start flowing again. I'm thankful for that._

Kaim laughs aloud.

The guards tie his hand behind him, put chains on his ankles, and start for the punishment room.

"What the hell are you laughing at, Number 8?"

"Yeah, stop it! We'll punish you even more!"

But Kaim just keeps on laughing; laughing at the top of his lungs.

_If I fill my lungs with all new air, will the stench disappear?Or have my body and mind rotted so much already that I can't get rid of the stench so easily?_

_How long will they keep me locked up in here? _

_When can I get out of here? Will it be too late by then?When everything has rotted away, will I become less a "him" than an "it," the way our troops count enemy corpses?_

Kaim can hardly breathe.

It is as if the air is being squeezed out of his chest and the excruciating pain of it is drawing him back from the world of dreams to reality.

_Was I once in a prison in the far, far distant past?_

He half-wanders in the space between dream and reality.

He has had this dream any number of times—this nightmare, it might even be called. After waking, he tried to recall it, but nothing stays in his memory. One thing is certain, however: the appearance of the jail and of the guards in the dream if always the same.

_Could this be something I have actually experienced? If so, when could it have been?_

There is no way for him to tell.

Once he is fully awake, those questions he asked between dream and reality are, themselves, erased from his memory. He springs up with a scream, his breath labored, the back of his hand wiping the streams of sweat from his brow, and all that is left is the shuddering terror. It is always like this.

_Now, too— _

He mutters to himself as he attempts to retrieve whatever memory is left in a remote corner of his brain. "What kind of past life could I have lived through?"


	5. A Mother Comes Home

** Dream Five: **

**A Mother comes home**

.**  
><strong>

The boy has lost his smile, though he denies it. "Don't be silly, Kaim. Look! I'm smiling, aren't I?" He draws his cheeks back and lets his teeth show white against his brown skin. "If this isn't a smile, what is?"

Kaim nods but says nothing. He pats the boy on the shoulder as if to say, "Sure, sure."

"Come on, really look at me. I'm smiling, right?"

"Right. You're smiling."

"Anyway, forget about me. Hurry, let's go."

The boy has a sweet, open nature. He made instant friends with Kaim while the other townspeople kept their distance from the _'strange traveler.'_ Not that the boy chose the much older Kaim as a playmate. He leads Kaim to the tavern, which still hasn't opened its doors for the day.

"I hate to ask you to do this, but... would you, please?" The boy's voice seems to have carried inside.

A man in the tavern peals off a drunken howl. He sounds especially bad today. Kaim fights back a sigh and enters the tavern.

The man on the barstool is the boy's father, drunk again at midday. The boy is here to take him home. He looks at his father with sad eyes. Kaim puts his arm around the father's shoulder and discreetly moves the whiskey bottle away from him.

"Let's call it a day," he says. The man shoves Kaim's arm off and slumps down on the bar.

"I hate guys like you," he says.

"Yes, I know," says Kaim. "It's time to go home, though. You've had enough."

"You heard me, Kaim. Drifter! I hate you guys. I really really hate you guys."

The father is always like this when he is drunk—hurling curses at all "drifters," picking fights with any man dressed for the road, and finally slumping to the ground to sleep it off. His son is too small to drag him home.

With a sigh, Kaim finds himself again today supporting the drunken father's weight to keep him from toppling off the barstool.

The boy stares at his father, his eyes a jumble of sadness, anger, and pity. When his eyes meet Kaim's he shrugs as if to say: _Sorry to keep putting you through this. _

But Kaim is used to it. He has seen the father dead-drunk almost every day for the past year, ever since the boy and his father were left to live alone.

"Oh, well ..." the boy says with a strained smile as if trying to resign himself to the situation. "Poor Papa... ...poor me."

Supporting the father's weight on his shoulder, Kaim gives the boy a smile and says,"Yes, but you don't go out and get drunk the way he does."

"Ahem," the boy says, puffing his chest out. "Sometimes kids are tougher than grownups."

Kaim broadens his smile to signal to him "You're right."

"Of course I'm right," the boy all but says with the smile he gives back. It is the only kind of a smile the ten-year-old has managed to produce in the past year: so bitter it would numb your tongue if you could taste it. The boy's mother—the father's wife—left home a year ago.

She fell in love with a traveling salesman and abandoned the boy and his father.

"Mama was bored," the boy says matter-of-factly, looking back on his mother's infidelity.

"She got tired of doing the same thing every day. That's when she met him."

At the tender age of ten, the boy has learned that there are certain stories that have to be told with that matter-of-fact tone.

The father was born and raised in this small town and worked in the town office. He was not especially talented, but it was not a job that called for talent or quick wit. All he had to do was follow orders with diligence and submissiveness, and he did exactly that, year after year, without making waves.

"He called our life 'peaceful,' but Mama didn't think so. She said it was just_ 'ordinary'_ and _no fun._"

She was attracted to the life of the crafty traveling salesman. It was risky and exciting, like walking on top of a prison wall: one misstep and you could end up inside.

"Papa told Mama that the man was deceiving her, that all he wanted was her money, but he couldn't get through to her. Mama couldn't even think about us back then."

With utter detachment, as though holding it at arm's length, the boy reflects on the tragedy that struck his family. "I've heard the saying _'Love is blind.'_ It really is!" he says with a shrug and a sardonic laugh like a full-fledged adult.

Kaim says nothing.

"Children should act their age" is another saying, but probably not one that could be spoken with a great deal of meaning to a boy who had lost his mother's love. And even if Kaim presumed to admonish him, the boy would likely pass it off with a strained smile and say, "Sometimes kids are tougher than grownups."

The boy's father, however, shows his displeasure when his son uses grownup expressions.

"The little twerp's lost all his boyishness. He despises me now. He thinks I'm pitiful. Deep down he's laughing at me for letting my wife be taken by another man, damn him." It bothers him especially when he is drunk.

His annoyance far outweighs his fatherly love for his son. Sometimes he even slaps the boy across the face, or tries to. When he is drunk, the boy can easily dodge his slaps, and he ends up sprawled on the floor. Even as he is drowning in a sea of liquor, he can sometimes turn unexpectedly serious and start asking questions.

"Say, Kaim, you've been traveling for a long time, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"Do you enjoy it all that much? Going to strange towns; meeting strangers can't be all that... Is it so wonderful that you'd be willing to abandon the life you're living now for it?"

He asks the same thing over and over. Kaim's answer is always the same. "Sometimes it's enjoyable, and sometimes it's not." He doesn't know what else to say.

"You know, Kaim, I've never set foot outside this town. Same with my father and my grandfather and my great-grandfather, and the one before him. We've always been born here and died here. My wife's family, too. They've had roots in this town for generations. So why did she do it? _Why_ did she leave? What did she need so badly that she had to leave me and her own son?"

Kaim merely smiles without answering. The answer to such a question cannot be conveyed in words. Try though he might to explain it, the reason certain people are drawn irresistibly to the road can never be understood by people who don't have that impulse. The father is simply one of those people who can never understand.

Failing to elicit a reply from Kaim, the father sinks again into the sea of drunkenness. "I'm scared, Kaim," he says. "My son might do it, too. He might go away and leave me here someday. When I hear him talking like a grownup, I get so scared I can't stand it."

.

.

* * *

><p>.<p>

The boy's mother eventually comes back.

The traveling salesman cheated her out of every last bit of her savings, and the moment she was no longer any use to him, he left her. Physically and mentally broken, she has only one place to return to—the home she abandoned. First she writes a letter from the neighboring town, and when her husband reads it again and again through drink-clouded eyes, he laughs derisively.

"Serves her right, the miserable witch."

He makes a show of tearing the letter to pieces in front of Kaim, without showing it to his son.

Kaim tells the boy everything and asks him, "What do you want to do? Whatever you decide, I'll help you make it happen."

"Whatever I decide?" the boy asks in return with his usual detached smile.

"If you want to leave this town, I'll let you have enough money to help you get by for a while," Kaim says. "I can do that much."

He is utterly serious.

The father has no intention of forgiving his wife. He will almost certainly turn her away if she shows up, and probably with a proud, vindictive smile on his face. Kaim knows, however, that if the mother loses her home and leaves this town once and for all, the father will go back to drinking every day, cursing his wife's infidelity, bemoaning his own fate, taking out his anger on strangers, and constantly revealing the worst side of himself to his son.

Kaim's long life on the road has taught him this. Constant travel means meeting many different people, and the boy's father is undoubtedly one of the weakest men Kaim has ever met.

"You could join your mother and go to another town. Or if you wanted to go somewhere by yourself, I could find you work."

Either would be better, Kaim believes, than for the boy to continue living alone like this with his father. The boy, however, seemingly intrigued, looks straight at Kaim, revealing his white teeth.

"You've been traveling a long time, haven't you, Kaim?"

"Uh-huh..."

"Always alone?"

"Sometimes alone, sometimes not..."

"Hmmm..."

The boy gives a little nod and, with the sad smile of a grownup, says, "You don't really get it do you?"

"What's that?"

"All this traveling, and you still don't understand the most important thing." His sad smile takes on its usual bitter edge.

Kaim finally learns what the boy is talking about three days later.

A tired-looking woman in tattered clothes drags herself from the highway into the marketplace. The townsfolk back away from her, staring, leaving her in the center of a broad, empty circle.

The boy's mother has come back.

The boy breaks his way through the crowd and enters the circle. The mother sees her son, and her travel-withered cheeks break into a smile. The boy takes one step, and another step toward his emaciated, smiling mother. He is hesitant at first, but from the third step he is running, and he throws his arms around her. He is crying. He is smiling. For the first time that Kaim has seen,  
>he wears the unclouded smile of a child.<p>

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please forgive me..." his mother begs, in tears.

She clasps his head to her bosom and says, smiling through her tears,"You've gotten so big!" Then she adds: "I won't leave you again. I'll stay here forever..."

A stir goes through the crowd. It comes from the direction of the tavern.

Now the father breaks through the wall of people and enters the circle. He is drunk. Stumbling, he edges toward his wife and son. He glares at his wife.

The boy stands between them, guarding his mother. "Papa, stop it!" he yells. "Mama is back. That's enough, isn't it? Forgive her, Papa, please!"

His voice is choked with tears. The father says nothing in reply.

Glaring at the two of them, he collapses to his knees, his arms open wide. He enfolds both his wife and son. The shattered family is one again.

"Papa, please, don't hold us so tight! It hurts!"

The boy is crying and smiling. The mother can only sob. The father weeps in rage.

Witnessing the scene from the back of the crowd, Kaim turns on his heels.

"Are you really leaving?" the boy asks again and again as he accompanies Kaim to the edge of town.

"Uh-huh. I want to get across the ocean before winter sets in."

"Papa is already missing you. He says he thought you two could finally become drinking buddies from now on."

"You can drink with him when you grow up."

"When I grow up, huh?" the boy cocks his head, a little embarrassed, then he mutters, "I wonder if I'll still be living in this town then."

No one knows that, of course. Maybe some years on from now, the father will spend his days drunk again because his son has left his hometown and family. And yet—Kaim recalls something he forgot to say to the boy's weak father.

"We call it a 'journey' because we have a place to come home to. No matter how many detours or mistakes a person might make, as long as he has a place to come home to, a person can always start again."

"I don't get it," says the boy.

Kaim remembers something else.

"Smile for me,"he says one last time, placing a hand on the boy's shoulder.

"Like this?" He reveals his white teeth, and his cheeks wrinkle up. It's a good smile. He has finally managed to retrieve the smile of a young boy.

"Now your turn, Kaim."

"Uh... sure."

The boy studies Kaim's smile as if assigning it a grade.

"Maybe a little sad," he says. That he is joking makes his words hit home all the more. The boy smiles again as if providing a model for Kaim.

"Okay, then," he says with a wave of the hand, "I'm going shopping with Papa and Mama today."

Kaim smiles and walks away. Then he hears the boy calling his name one last time.

"Even if we're saying goodbye, I'm not going to cry, Kaim! Sometimes kids are tougher than grownups."

Kaim does not look back, his only reply a wave of the hand. The boy's expression would probably change if their eyes met.

He decides to play it strong to the end. Kaim walks on. After a brief respite, his journey with no place to go home to starts again.

A journey with no place to go home to; the poets call that _"wandering." _


End file.
